Several different companies currently offer big square balers that utilize onboard cutter apparatus to reduce the inflowing crop into smaller pieces. Typically, such balers are "in-line", bottom-fed machines in which crop material is picked up directly underneath and slightly ahead of an overhead, fore-and-aft baling chamber containing a reciprocating plunger. Successive charges of material are delivered to the chamber through an underslung transfer duct. The cutter apparatus is located generally between the pickup and the transfer duct, and the rotor of the apparatus is used not only to reduce the materials into smaller pieces, but also to feed the materials so reduced into the duct for subsequent stuffing up into the baling chamber by stuffer mechanism operating through successive operating cycles.
A problem with conventional balers of this type resides in their reliance on the cutter rotor as a means of both cutting the materials into smaller pieces and then those materials into the transfer duct to form a charge before the charge is stuffed up into the baling chamber. While the rotor may perform its cutting operations well, it is not particularly suited for feeding and packing. Consequently, the charge may not be wellshaped before being loaded into the baling chamber, with the result that the overall shape of the finished bale may suffer.